Wednesday, 1 August 2012

Girl walking toward her mom (taken by use of an uneven mirror
with the image stabilizer turned on), East Portal, Black Canyon of the
Gunnison National Park, Colorado: photo by Wing-Chi Poon, 12 May 2006

Watch "nothing", keep the image full of unresolved possibility. Try to experience

the inexplicability of a partial view of life, never quite forgetting

the peripheral observation. Withhold things. Let yourself stay caught

between expectation and frustration.Settle for the frustration

of the
partial view. See you're being permitted

a deeper leap into the world of what is shown

because that world is being held at such unusual distance. Regard the world

at arm's length in any case, out of respect for its intrinsic mystery. Find

in images the presentiments of future memories. Seek to intensify

the ghostly presence in what is seen

of what remains unseen. Designate the poetic image

as essentially bewildering. Explain

nothing. Consider the frame a drifting block of affects and signs.

Black bird (Corvus corax) landing near a tent. (The image stabiliser
happened to track the motion of the bird creating this blurred
background effect.) Stovepipe Wells Campground, Death Valley National Park, California: photo by Wing-Chi Poon, 22 December 2004

Still from Three Times: Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 2005

Still from The Sandwich Man: Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 1983

Still from The Boys from Fengkuei: Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 1983

Still from Café Lumiere: Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 2003

A couple are seen in the middle of the Vancouver
riot after the Canucks lost to the Boston Bruins in the Stanley Cup
decider, 15 June 2011: photo by Rich Lam/Getty Images, via The Guardian

At the edge of the Black Canyonwe didn't go too far the chasm dizzy-making pink marblelayers this wayand that--

what it took to lie downin among the pinon pinejuniperand sagesoft sanddeer totteringexcellent viewof Lone Conein the distancestars right beyondour hands our feetinstead of a firethat summerso dry underfoot.

"Seek to intensify/ the ghostly presence in what is seen/ of what remains unseen."

We tend to think of phenomena as figures on some broad universal ground, never attending to the great teeming world from which these objects slip into our scope, a world that swims in polite disregard of the all too orderly violence of our gaze.

Actually hobbled out with the busted up head last night, only possible hours the full moony darkest, and encountered two sets of deer -- this time of year they come down because the hills are dry, it's moisture they want, they can drink from a bush, and they are as am I in flight from the traffic. But I am the violator in their world. They freeze. In the middle of the always potentially deadly street. I say, "It's okay..." But it doesn't help. The California Mule Deer was here first, we only crossed those black canyons to arrive to die.

Susan, it might well have been a mountain lion. When the deer come down, the mountain lioness will follow, leaving her cubs behind in the quest to find something to feed them.

And out there on the corner where Beauty was doomed when somebody dropped a smartphone dime on her, there on the Avenue of the Five Stars, the international diners still pass unconcerned, another piece stitched into in this incomplete picture,

Crows arguing here invisibly through grey whiteness of fog in branches of Sequoia sempervirens -- their territorial claiming conversations never quite accidental as ours 'to hand', still always bespeaking a yet deeper leap into what is shown.

only to findher herein Californiachasing the mule deerbalancing on hoovesof plastic of bambooof cork and leatherto their eateryteeming with tastessmells--desirea momentonly the braveand desperate followonly the dumb luckyactually findbefore being shot.